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Chapter 13 - Dictionaries as Material Objects

from Part II - Dictionaries as Books

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2024

Edward Finegan
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
Michael Adams
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington
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Summary

What is the stuff of dictionaries? And why does thinking about that stuff matter?  These are the paramount questions of this chapter. The physical print dictionary is a specter that looms large in media and the popular imagination, but dictionaries aren’t just or only big books. Accordingly, this chapter begins by drawing attention to the wide array of material incarnations dictionaries have taken – the tablets and scrolls that preceded books, the websites and apps that have superseded them. Next, it considers the materialities necessary to making and using those various forms: the evolving variety of tools available to amateur and professional lexicographers; the implements of interaction deployed by dictionary readers; the traces of production, circulation, and reception that exist in private collections and informal or institutional archives. Finally, I’ll describe some non-textual uses of dictionaries; just as dictionaries aren’t only books, they aren’t only consulted for their content but rather mobilized to a range of physical, aesthetic, symbolic ends.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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